I am a Dutchie / Kiwi 🇳🇱🇳🇿, living the dream in New Zealand. This years adventure is Central Asia and Europe. I’ve got a great passion for travelling, different cultures and meeting others! Let’s hang out and have a good time!

Hello! I enjoy learning more about that wonderful world. My hobbies are snowboarding , studying languages, reading philosophical, travel and historical books, writing short stories, performing, taking photos and travelling. I'm open to make new friends!

If your message starts with "Hey Bro" I say no. Now that we have that out of the way please take a read: ABOUT ME Before I moved to Berlin I was a forest firefighter by summer and a traveller by winter. I graduated with a pretty bi-polar degree: a music major and an economics minor. Now I am trying to settle down a little.. if moving to another continent and starting a completely unrelated career counts as settling down. Though I think it's time for another change again soon.. PHILOSOPHY Life can be so amazing so easily, as long you as you let it be, but that can be difficult at times.

Hi everyone - I'm Erin. I'm back living in my hometown of Nelson, NZ, after a decade in Europe. I'm a father of two, entrepreneur, photographer, foodie, pianist, outdoors enthusiast... I've been on Couchsurfing since the heyday, when we hosted loads of surfers in the student flat in Christchurch I shared with my two buddies. Over the years, I've called on hosts in dozens of different countries all over the world, and enjoyed meeting so many different people. I've only had one bad experience on Couchsurfing, from which I was rescued by a kindly member of the public who hosted me for a week and ended up hosting other surfers himself. It's a great site, or was... or is... I'm diving back in, let's find out which! I've been living in France for ten years, and it's great, but also weird, to be back in my hometown. Small-town NZ is a sharp contrast with metropolitan Europe. But I'm playing to the place's strengths. There's a cooking school and music school within a minute of my house, Nelson has an unimaginably good climate, and you can walk for hours in the hills right behind my house and barely meet a soul. Within an hour are some of the world's most beautiful natural areas, and best vineyards. It's hard to beat! For work, I'm still plugged in to Europe. I own a specialist mostly-online second-hand-only camera shop, and when I moved back to NZ, I sort of turned into the IT guy and the project muscle. I do whatever needs doing and can be done from over here. Increasingly, work is taking me to Japan, and I'm keen to learn as much as I can about the place. I've been surprised how many requests I get for hosting, and I'm sorry I can't reply to you all. We really only have the time to host occasionally, though I am a bit more available for coffee, local hikes and so forth. Some of the things which might make it more likely that I can host you would include: -You're writing 1-2 weeks before your intended stay. -You're going to be in the region a little while, so even if you only stay a day or two, we might get to see you again! -We've several interests in common. -You like kids! -You don't use AI to write to me (yeah, for real, that's a thing). We both work close to full time, but with considerable flexibility. Typically, we are keen to hang out a little with our surfers, not just provide you with somewhere to sleep. So if we don't have much time, we're more likely to say no. We always prefer to eat with our guests, and you can count on us for something delicious.

CURRENT MISSION To see and experience as much of the world as possible. ABOUT ME I love to travel. There isn't one place in the world I would not like to visit. I love seeing new places, doing new things, trying different food and meeting new people. PHILOSOPHY ”Try everything at least once” “Life starts outside your comfort zone” and “Never allow waiting to become a habit. Live your dreams and take risks. Life is happening now!”

ABOUT ME Often travelling as one of my jobs is working as a Tour Guide. I'm outgoing, adventurous, love the outdoors and sports. Have played a lot of beach volleyball, soccer and touch rugby. I am always looking to live and promote an active healthy lifestyle. I love planning and delivering sporting or outdoor events which I have been doing all over the world over the past 5 years.

CURRENT MISSION To enjoy every precious day, and to help others to enjoy life too. ABOUT ME We have done a quite lot of travelling, well we have been around a long time! Now on a shoestring budget. NZ, OZ, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, more Turkey, Prague, Hungary, Austria, southern Italy, Malta, Malaysia, Singapore,more Turkey and more Turkey.We've become a bit addicted to Turkey!and go there every year! And a long long time ago (before Peter) I did the big OE, through Oz, Asia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, etc,etc. I also did the trans Siberian train trip in 1980. Peter and I were living a great life in Fiji on and off for 9 years. We lived in NZ for ages before realising that it was time to quit the rat race and take things easy, so we left our grown up son and went to Fiji. After swimming, fishing, and watching the world go by, doing some Rotary work on projects to provide water to fijian village schools so that they can have flush toilets and drinking water available, we decided it was time to return to the real world and we are now back in NZ. Living in Fiji taught us a lot about what is important in life, and we are determined not to be too sucked in to the rat race again. We are both retired now and spend summer in NZ, currently needed for grand child duty, a new experience and enjoyable though tiring at times! We plan to travel again in the winter. I am doing some voluntary work which I really enjoy, and have taken up pottery again after a break of over 30 years - not very good it it is fun! There are just not enough hours in the day though! PHILOSOPHY As we get older we realise that life is for living, for enjoying, and for not stressing over minor problems. Its not always easy to remember this, but we try to go with the flow.

CURRENT MISSION Live life to the fullest and be good to planet earth ABOUT ME I am a keen tramper and love the outdoors. Have done about 150 overnight tramping trips in NZ's backcountry and I am always keen to explore some new amazing places. I am particular passionate about my home region and the most beautiful part of NZ, the West Coast. Have a look here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108505499983932538957/albums/5677362863576131457 I am happy, adventurous and passionate about conservation. PHILOSOPHY "So that's the easy answer: forswear idealism; resign myself to a sad maturity; put away the things of youth; be thankful I survived and move on. But that's horseshit too, a craven capitulation. I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic - the part of yourself you treasure the most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?" Ken, April 2003 - Brooklyn, New York (Emergency Sex And Other Desperate Measures) I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. WALT WHITMAN "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau - 1854 "We need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don't let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained." ~Letters to My Son: A Father's Wisdom on Manhood, Women, Life and Love